Borg Drone

shriek in terror) [i]Star Trek[/i]. Borgs, short for \'cyborgs,\' were a race from the [i]Star Trek[/i] universe who are known for their lust for assimilation. They had all sorts of wires and cables running throughout their metallicized body. I\'ll admit that while in my youth I may have watched the [i]Star Wars[/i] Trilogy every day for one summer, my brother was a Trekkie. He went to [i]Star Trek[/i] conventions, read the books, loved the movies and TV series... all that creepy stuff (it\'s only creepy if it\'s [i]Star Trek[/i]—[i]Star Wars[/i] obsessions are good for your soul). I remember seeing borgs somewhere, and I remember just that they were creepy, mean guys. This skin isn\'t a borg in appearance, yet it achieves its goal by other means. Let me get straight down to it: this is a tricky file. It\'s the first one that I have to review where I have to choose between blasting it out of the water for its lack of quality upon first glance or give it a positive review because it may just be that way. Zott has updated [file=\"12452\"]his previous version of the Borg[/file], which was an insult to the integrity of JK2Files, with new textures, sounds, bot scripts, shaders, etc. Upon simply testing the file as a skin, I was prepared to give it half of a star out of four because the author simply pasted images onto the original prisoner model and gave up half-way through trying to align them all, or fix the funny blotches, or do something with the horrendous head; and it didn\'t work at all especially with the flat-modeled prisoner beneath—even if it might look sort of cool, it\'s [i]not[/i] the Borg Drone for which he was aiming. But then I caught myself. A good reviewer never fails to test every aspect of a file. I decided to add some bots and play with them to see how well they were scripted. It really took me by surprise when [i]I[/i] was blasted out of the water by those bots. \"Resistance is futile,\" they said. \"Darn right,\" I replied. I now know what it must be like in those silly [i]Star Trek[/i] tales to face a borg. I have an activity for you. If you don\'t care for this file, that\'s all right. But if you\'re bored and curious, download this file, read the readme and use whichever shader modification you want for the skin, and go into your own server (\"Create server\"). You need to allow all guns, fully enable Force powers with \"Jedi Master\" as the highest rank, go into the Nar Shaddaa Streets Free For All, and add six or seven of these Borg Drone bots at the Jedi Master level—perhaps also increase the saber damage by opening up the console and running the command \"\\cg_saberDamageScale 4\" (or any other higher number than the default \"1\")—and fight them. You might manage to beat them up a bit, but they really know how to pack a punch. They seemed to only aim their fire at me when I get close, they used all sorts of picked-up weapons, and they used the Force a lot to keep me falling down the pits to my death. They were delightfully ferocious in their cunning to kill me. This may be easily accomplishable by any bot script, but the sounds coming from the bots are the clinchers. They have robotic, evil voices that threw all sorts of things at me; even if I couldn\'t tell what they\'re saying from all the chaotic noise, it sounded insane. What they lack in physical quality of appearance they have in taunt madness. I was driven almost out of my mind by all of the extremely accurate fire coming from what could be miles away accompanied by their jeers of assimilation, which were actually somewhat humorous if you listened to them. Sometimes I would jump toward them, but all of their blasting at me pushed me back so I couldn\'t even get to them to kill me. Zott created a skin that will give you every feeling that you needed for being a true Borg Drone. Forget the bad skinning job, the technical exercise in shading, the ugly face, or the misaligned, copy-and-pasted textures. This file is a real test for a file reviewer, because you really have to understand more of what you feel than what your eyes tell you. \"Your eyes can decieve you; don\'t trust them,\" said a great Jedi named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Zott, you have learned how to use shaders, but you could definitely work on your skinning ability, but somehow your compilation of the right textures to cover up the prisoners, your creation of the crazy bots, and the assembly of the maddening ridicule of their sounds has made this skin worthy of wasting away for a couple hours just playing with bots or annoying your friends. You will be assimilated. —Ra-Kom
Skin rating: * * * (out of four) — 7/10 Bot Support: Yes Team Support: Yes New Sounds: Yes NPC Support: Yes Zott has created his skinned interpretation of the Borg Drone, from (get ready to